Fellow Hashimoto's Sufferers

If you're a fellow Hashimoto's patient, and/or if you have a number of autoimmune conditions, have you heard about LDN? It's low dose naltrexone, and a compounding pharmacy can whip some up to help you with the symptoms of many conditions. I have six autoimmune conditions. I like to list them alphabetically because I'm weird like that. Ready? Achalasia, alopecia, chronic urticaria, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, pernicious anemia, and vitiligo. It all started in 1995 when I had a bout with hives that was a real nuisance. They lasted nine months. Nine. Long. Months. I had to take so many antihistamines; there were trips to the dermatologist for steroid shots. They finally went away. (Here is my cocktail of what I took to keep them at bay: Atarax and Zantac). Even after my last tiny welt, I still had to take the medicines another six months and avoid aspirin, wine and ibuprofen for that time so not to wake the beast. I didn't know until years later, that people with idiopathic chronic urticaria can be autoimmune patients. Fast forward a few years, and I had begun to have trouble swallowing (welcome to the autoimmune family, achalasia). Then the white spots on my body, I'm looking at you, vitiligo. And all the while, I was having fatigue, weight gain, heavy periods, and hair loss. That's the one that finally got the doctors' attention: Hashimoto's thyroiditis. That one took four years to diagnose because my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) was in "normal" range. At this point, I wanted to give the "normal" range the finger. I knew something was wrong. I was diagnosed with depression which often accompanies thyroid disease, but my husband would tell me, "you're not depressed, but you are the most tired person I know." And at the time, his mother had Stage IV breast cancer, and she had more energy than I did. I could go on and on about thyroid disease because it's what unearthed my obsession with trying to feel good despite the symptoms of a disease that, I believe, is often under-diagnosed in many women (as the disease is mainly in women though some men are Hashi's patients).

Back to the LDN. It has been clinically tested and found that it can help with many autoimmune conditions including Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

Suzy Cohen, who is known as America's Pharmacist, lists the conditions it can help on her website. She calls LDN the "medicine your doctor never told you about (but should have)."

Here are the conditions it has been known to reduce inflammation.

Rheumatoid arthritis

Crohn’s disease

Celiac

Hashimoto’s thyroiditis

Graves’ hyperthyroidism

Multiple Sclerosis

Lupus (SLE systemic lupus erethematosus)

Sjogren’s

asthma

Raynaud’s

Eczema

Vitiligo

Ménière’s disease

Parkinson’s disease.

I have two, actually three, conditions on this list. I forgot to list eczema in my list of conditions because I've had it so long, and it has actually calmed down a bunch. If you have any of these conditions, ask your doctor about having LDN compounded for you. I am going in next week for my first round of blood work since starting the medication to see what it's doing for my antibodies.